Saturday, December 5, 2009

I’m finally going to devote a full blog entry to the creation and character of Wolf. As leader of the Irregulars, Wolf is the driving force behind the action of Worlds Apart. Among the heroes and villains that populate the Trademark Universe, Wolf may be my favorite super-citizen. The story of his origin is a marriage of myriad pop-culture influences working in tandem with my need to explore ideas of justice, morality, race, and redemption.

Influence #1 - Blaxploitation

My dad took us to a lot of drive-in movies when we were young. Normally, my mom insisted we see some wholesome Disney fare. Occasionally, my dad was able to talk my mom into letting us see more adult-themed movies. I saw Planet of the Apes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes at the drive-in. I also saw the entire early James Bond series. My most vivid drive-in memory, however, was a movie called Slaughter.

Being a native Clevelander, my dad was a huge Browns fan. This meant he was also a huge Jim Brown fan. When Jim retired from football and began making movies, my dad made sure he saw Brown’s first effort, a blaxploitation classic entitled Slaughter. I’m not sure what year we saw Slaughter at the drive in, or what summers we also saw Shaft and Hammer. What I do know is that by 1976 I knew enough about the plots and conventions of ‘70s blaxploitation films to be enthralled with the “street life” world of pimps, prostitutes, numbers runners, street gangs, and the eternal struggle with “the Man.”

Influence #2 – The Black Panthers & Black Muslims

As a boy, I was acutely aware of the very real presence of racial discontent in our country. Given my family background (which I’ve covered in previous blogs), I watched the evening news with the eye of someone twice my age. Civil rights protests marred by violence, scowling black militants, pro athletes like Cassius Clay and Lew Alcindor converting to the Nation of Islam -- the nightly news images both thrilled and scared me.

By the time I was 9 years old, I knew all about the inhumanity of slavery and the scourge of Jim Crow. I understood why Black leaders were angry and demanding redress. I wanted Black Americans to succeed in their struggle, to be happy and treated with justice and respect. Decades before Rodney King’s famous quote, I myself asked: “Can’t we all just get along?”

Influence #3 – The Falcon and the Black Panther

After my first comic book convention in 1973, (covered in my previous blog entry) I attended similar events with my dad on a regular basis. Sometime before 1975, I picked up some Fantastic Four and Avengers comics featuring T’Challa, the Black Panther. I immediately loved the character, a brilliant scientist who was also one of the Marvel Universe’s most fearsome fighting machines.

During the same timespan, I ended up discovering the now legendary Captain America #117 in a stack of my brother’s discarded comics. This issue featured the first ever appearance of Sam Wilson, a.k.a. the Falcon, a man who would soon join Cap as the co-star of the retitled Captain America and the Falcon. Once again, I was taken with the unique personality of a Black Superhero.

1976

I’d created the Trademark Universe months earlier. My first Black superhero, Brigade (later known as the Retaliator), debuted a few months after my first wave of heroes: Skater, Hangman, Beachcomber, Son of Liberty, and the Optimist. With Brigade/Retaliator’s face obscured by his helmet, I felt the need to create a more visible and upfront Black superhero.

Warning Skater to “stay off my turf,” Black Wolf grudgingly accepted the established hero’s aid in bringing the hate-mongering culprits to justice. Subsequent Skater stories featured more and more of Black Wolf. Constantly butting heads, the two heroes-cum-adversaries relentlessly patrolled the city along different paths. At some point, Wolf inexplicably dropped the “Black” portion of his alter ego and started dressing more like Shaft than a superhero. As I continued developing his backstory and private life, I slowly realized that my one-time supporting player presented a far more compelling character than the more straightlaced Skater.

I should pause here to remind everyone that I was an eleven year old suburban white kid trying to create “real” black characters based solely on pop culture archetypes. In other words, my efforts were unintentionally offensive, being rife with stereotypes. The more I wrote Wolf, the more various elements from the blaxploitation genre colored his character.

An advocate of “street justice,” Wolf had no qualms about befriending or assisting neighborhood denizens of questionable character in pursuit of the greater good. His crash pad boasted a bevy of big afro-ed, bare-midriff-showing, black beauty queens with names like Delilah, Cleopatra, and Nefertiti. Whenever Wolf got called into action, he would invariably be roused from a large bed amid two, three, or even four of his “does.” These same women constantly provided Wolf with “walking around money,” although no mention was made of how they earned the “dough.” Never openly labeling these women as prostitutes, even I could read between my own lines.

Within the working world of the super-biz, Wolf garnered the reputation as a notorious “player.” (Yes, thanks to countless blaxploitation films, I knew the word DECADES before it entered popular parlance.) Clarion, Maze, Howitzer, Gypsy, Lioness, Diatom, Pythoness, Kali, Paradise -- Wolf loved and left almost every superheroine and super-villainess in the Trademark Universe. His torrid affair with the equally libidinous Clarion provided the Trademark Universe’s first interracial romance. In the made-up letters section I wrote for Silver Streak’s comic book, fan reaction split straight down the middle between admiration and outrage.

When Tony Lewis and I finally decided to go ahead with Worlds Apart, I had a decision to make. I could “whitewash” Wolf to be more in keeping with modern, politically-correct sensitivities. Or I could keep him the way I developed him, blaxploitated warts and all.

Needless to say, just a few panels of Worlds Apart make clear that I’m going with my instincts and presenting Wolf as originally conceived. My reasoning, whether good or bad, will become evident as the story progresses and the Irregulars plunge headlong into a world they never made.

Now, for those of you wondering just how Wolf came to find himself cavorting around with the likes of Silver Streak and Hellfield, let’s turn to Wolf’s entry in the Titanic Trademark Handbook (Please note, much like Buckshot, Wolf’s origin story was developed and embellished over almost a decade of stories. The entry below encapsulates the final, revised version of Wolf’s origin):

Wolf (Archibald Turrentine) Wolf’s origin actually begins two hundred years before his birth. American patriot and Revolutionary War vigilante Jonathan Masters, a.k.a. the Son of Liberty, gains extraordinary physical abilities by ingesting an herbal concoction formulated by his slave, Brown Tom, a former tribal medicine man. This recipe is passed down as a well-guarded secret among Brown Tom’s kin for three generations. The “miracle elixir,” as Masters called it, finally vanished after the death of Brown Tom’s great-great-grandson, Moses, a slave to the Turrentine family during the mid-1800s.

One hundred years later, geneticist Dr. Linus Turrentine spends his spare time obsessively researching the lost family formula after finding mention of it in recently uncovered journals. After a decade of trials and errors, Linus finally stumbles upon the right combination of herbs. Dubbing his rediscovery the Meta-Vitamin, or Metamin for short, Turrentine hypothesizes that the Metamin acts as a catalyst of sorts, spurring the human body to utilize 100% of the energy stored in foods. Turrentine’s first guinea pig is his own son, Archibald, a star high-school athlete, who begins taking the supplement with extraordinary results.

With heightened reflexes, speed, stamina, and strength, Archie becomes the most highly-recruited high school athlete in the country. With so many offers pending, Archie fails to register for any of the colleges and universities before getting drafted into the Army to fight in Vietnam. As a soldier, Archie is beloved by his fellow grunts and hated by anyone in authority. Archie fights the war “Archie’s Way,” and his bravery on the battlefield is only equaled by his contempt for the bureaucrats and pencil-pushers making the command decisions. As a fitting conclusion to his military career, Archie bears the singular distinction of being awarded the Medal of Honor while simultaneously being dishonorably discharged.

Resurfacing at UCLA in the late 1960s, Archie’s consciousness is seized with radical new ideas of civil rights, social justice, and struggle against the elitist ruling class. Against his father’s wishes, Archie abandons his college athletic career for a life of radical and revolutionary activities. During one such protest, Archie stumbles upon one of his revolutionary idols secretly colluding with FBI agents in an effort to destroy a fellow black activist and political rival.

Disillusioned once again, Archie retreats to Harlem, retiring from active life to own and manage a health food store based upon the herbal remedies of his forebears. Joining Archie from home, his brother Robbie provides the brains behind the operation. A brilliant chemist who inherited Linus’ scientific gifts, Robbie keeps Archie supplied with the Metamin while cooking up a variety of other herbals and medicinals that soon find him running afoul of the local drug pushers in the neighborhood.

As his Harlem neighborhood consumes itself with violence and criminal activity, Archie turns a blind eye to the social blight, preferring instead to keep to himself, his pet dog Wolf, his books, his yoga, martial arts, and countless female companions. When Robbie runs afoul of a notorious drug kingpin, Archie provides him no support, preferring to stay uninvolved despite pressure from his brother and threats from local thugs.

Failing to read the writing on the wall, Archie is utterly devastated when gang members ransack his store, kill his brother and his main squeeze, Cleopatra, and kidnap his dog, Wolf. Setting out to find his dog and wreak vengeance, Archie stumbles across the gang’s hideout, kicks ass, and ends up incinerating their entire operation. Archie is unable to save his dog, however. He finds its corpse being eaten by one of the gang’s killer guard dogs.

Overwhelmed by grief and shame for his apathy, Archie takes to the streets as a vigilante, taking the name Wolf in honor of his fallen pet. It is during one of his initial forays that he encounters the man who will be both his greatest influence and his most bitter rival, Silver Streak. Fighting the Klan, the FBI, the Army, and anyone else who represents “the Man,” Wolf’s constant nonconformity to superhero norms eventually drives him deep underground. Here he remains for a good fifteen years until finally emerging to face the outstanding charges against him.

In a highly publicized trial that sees almost every superhero (and some super-villains) in the Trademark Universe testifying for either the prosecution or the defense, Wolf is eventually found not guilty on all counts, save one manslaughter charge: the accidental killing of a vicious National Guard commander. To this charge, Wolf voluntarily pleads guilty, resigning himself to whatever fate awaits him.

In an enlightened sentence, the judge places Wolf on probation, requiring him to carry out his community service by becoming a mentor to super-powered felons who have expressed the desire to reform and go straight. Forming a kind of superhero halfway house, Wolf’s loosely-knit squad eventually forms the basis of the world’s most iconoclastic super team, the Irregulars.

Comprised of members who have grown frustrated with the legal limitations shackling mainstream super-teams, the Irregulars present a constant chaotic presence in the super-biz. As their single-minded general, Wolf’s no-holds-barred approach to social justice makes him one of the most dominant and controversial forces in the super-biz.

Weapons -- Wolf possesses night-vision goggles which allow him to see in relative darkness.

Personal Items -- A deeply committed radical and champion of social justice, Wolf is probably, along with Silver Streak, the most ethical (and at times self-righteous) hero in the game. He does have one major skeleton in his closet, however. His long-estranged son, Jacob, who has been taking the Metamin since birth, is the super-villain Caracal.

As leader of the Irregulars, Wolf must constantly put on a stern all-business demeanor to keep his less-than-disciplined troops in line. Although he knows that any of his teammates could kill him without batting an eye, he still manages to intimidate them, commanding their obedience and respect.